Just a little disclaimer that posts like this used to drive me CRAZY, so I won’t be the least bit offended if someone decides not to read.

I went back to work in January then took another leave in mid February. I say I did this because Sweetness needs PT but in really, it was for me. Work was fairly understanding and let me come in just one day a week.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with working one day a week. On one hand, I love being home with Sweetness. She is just the most fun right now, learning something new every day. But I am someone who hates not giving 100% and not doing my job well. And being in 1 day a week just sucked. I would start dreading it the day before. I would have to spend the beginning part of the day getting caught up in changes to treatment plans and then would spend the rest of the day feeling completely ineffective because while my position is important to the development of the program, in terms of day to day operations, I’m not missed that much. And feeling that replaceable kind of sucks.

So starting in April I’ve been going in 2 days a week. Mostly to ease myself back into full time, which will have to happen in May. And that thought I really hate. I’ve gotten over all my issues with the Spanish speaking nanny. I made myself some flashcards and we’ve gotten pretty good at communicating to each other. As an aside, I think she really appreciates the effort I’ve made to learn some Spanish (the other family in the nanny share just calls her son to translate for her) and suddenly it seems that she knows more english than she did before. But I just don’t want to work full time at all. I know it is short term and that in September I’ll be job sharing, working 3 days a week…but I don’t want to do that either.

This will probably be controversial and I am not saying that fertile parents don’t love their kids, but I really think that in light of everything it took to get Sweetness here, I don’t want to miss a single second of her growing up. I could care less that I hardly ever shower, that money is tight, that today I left the house with dried up Puffs on my shoulder. What I care about is that she takes her best naps snuggled up on my chest, that her whole body smiles when Mr H or I walk into a room, and that her giggle is the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I don’t want to take a single moment of all that for granted because I know that I am incredibly lucky and blessed to have been given such a gift.

Of course none of this is news to anyone. Most working moms miss their kids during the day and wonder if they are doing the right thing. But for some reason, the idea of working sends me right back to the brink of being depressed all the time. And I hated when I was depressed all the time. Plus I always figured that I was depressed all the time because I wanted a baby and couldn’t have one. Now I’ve got the baby and the depression comes back?!?! I don’t think it’s PPD, since she’s almost 8 months old, just ‘plain ol I hate how some things in my life are’ depression.

Which is equally ridiculous because I really am the luckiest person in the world. And I know it. I’ve got a husband who is an equal partner in pretty much every way and a healthy happy baby. What right do I have to complain??

There are no good answers here I know. We have no money and are slowly blowing through our savings. And while we’re very lucky that Mr H’s job is extremely secure, as is mine, it is still a bad time to be out of work. I guess mostly I’m just surprised that if we won the lottery, I would walk away and not look back. I always thought I’d be a super mom and wouldn’t want to give up my career. But now it’s career….what career? And super mom…what a joke!

Kudos to you if you’ve read through all these ramblings. I so miss blogging, getting it out there usually helps me to see everything clearer. Here’s to getting over myself, right?

We’re going to go with the bullets for now. I’ll try to expand on most of them in some upcoming posts. Just a warning lots and lots of baby talk ahead.

How much do I suck? I just logged on to update and saw my post for the last book tour sitting in my drafts. I remember racing to finish it before Obama’s speech but I guess I forgot to hit publish. I also blame the fact that I had the worst cold of my life. Big oops on that one

I’m back on leave again, working just one day a week. I’m loving it but why you ask??

Well first, Sweetness needs physical therapy. She has to.rticollis, which is most likely due to her vacuum delivery. We go once a week to the PT and have a whole series of exercises to do with her 5 times a day. Given that it is her neck, I just don’t trust someone else doing the exercises. The PT wants it to resolve by about a year or she’ll most likely recommend surgery. So it is worth me being out of work to get this fixed. She hates it but somehow continues to be her smiling, sweet self throughout it all.

And second, our childcare is a hot mess. We were on the waitlist for the center at Mr H’s work. When she was born we were down to # 32 on the list and they estimated we’d be in by March. Now, because of the sibling rule, we’re # 57. And they are saying that all of the siblings are not going to get in. Freaking fertiles!

So for now we’ve got a nanny share right near my work. First time we went was last week. I’m still not sold on it and am going to keep looking. Something about it just seems off to me. I can’t put my finger on it but I’m going to trust my gut. Until I find something better, I’m just going to keep on popping over there.

I can not believe that tomorrow Sweetness will be 6 months old!!! Insane

I caved and we are now crying it out. I didn’t want to do it, and on some level I still don’t. But now she is waking up to play, not because she needs us for any other reason. She is so much happier when she gets a good night’s sleep. We’re on night 3 of it. First night we had 5 awakenings lasting between 5 and 15 minutes, last night just 1 but it lasted for an hour. I’m still somewhat skeptical because she goes to sleep like a champ, has for months. I nurse her, rock her, sing a song, and put her in her crib with a kiss and she’s out. Sometimes she’s out until 1-ish when I feed her and other times she’s out for about 90 minutes.

I realized that I can not think in non-TTC terms. Hr H was out of town last week and I felt those familiar O twinges along with all the other signs that I couldn’t miss if I wanted to. My first thought…damn, we missed our chance this month. Ummmm…that would actually involve me letting him touch me and having the energy for such a thing! I seriously wonder how anyone has Irish twins!

Wow–those are some long bullets. My apologies for being MIA. I’ve been reading and following along with all of you. I’ve just been a VERY bad commentor. I’m going to try to be better though.

Yikes, nothing like breastfeeding questions to bring out the commentors!!

Let me clear my poor LC’s good name, she is not the one obsessed with time, etc, I am. In fact, she keeps telling me now that my milk supply is good, to just trust my body and trust the baby. Well, you all know that I have a VERY hard time trusting my body and I’m also a little nervous about trusting someone that poops her pants about 6 times a day. That doesn’t inspire trust. And I’m obsessive by my very nature. I obsess over minutia for a living…seriously, I break complex behaviors down into their itty bitty components and collect data on those itty bitty things. And then I analyze and graph and do all sorts of fun stuff with it. So me collecting data right now on her time on breast, if she cues, and her pee and poop is nothing. There is so much more I’d like to measure (like duration of sucking but I don’t have a free hand to work the timer, and I am SO not kidding)

But I am starting to relax about it all. When she’s hungry the girl most certainly eats, and when she isn’t, she doesn’t. The fact that she is starting to visibly gain weight and has grown out of her first set of PJ’s does make me feel a little bit better. So I’m working on the whole trust thing. But right now, there is no way I could stop with my data, no matter how many people tell me I’m being crazy, it makes me feel like I have some semblance of control and am doing something proactive to make sure she’s eating and staying healthy.

In other news, my dad is coming to stay with us for the weekend. Cue family drama. You may remember he left my mom in June and moved 8 hours away…and no one really knows why he made the move. He’s since lost his job so he’s now completely alone with nothing to do. For a man with a history of depression as well as a history of self-medicating that depression, that is not a good thing. He says he’s finally going to do something that makes him happy, instead of some corporate job. Only problem is, hiking and drinking wine seems to make him happiest. And he could open a hiking and wine store but that would be a pretty niche market…not sure how well it would do. So, he’s flying down for the weekend to see the baby, my mom got all upset that she won’t be able to see her this weekend (for the record, my mom lives under 10 minutes away and has come over on her lunch break to see Sweetness), my brother is pissed because my dad picked the only weekend all fall that he has to work…and Mr H and I don’t really know what to do with him. The whole thing is going to be so incredibly awkward. Luckily, we have a bunch of things around the house that Mr H needs help with. So that will at least give him something to do. And…in a few weeks, he wants to come down and stay for the entire week to help me out. So this is really just a dress rehearsal. uggg…

Now I have to go vacuum for him, you see, the man is also very allergic to cats and never wants to take any allergy medicine when he comes over. uggg again…

hmmm…as I re-read this, writing about my neuroses and then my dad’s makes my whole family seem kind of f-ed up…guess the apple doesn’t fall to far from the tree…hopefully Sweetness will be spared

I’ve been thinking about starting to blog for awhile. Then today, just as I was thinking “I should really start a blog, even if just for an online journal”, one of my favorite songs by The N.ields came on. The chorus goes like this,

And that pretty much summed it up for me. For a long time now, all I’ve wanted is a little sweetness, nothing more than that.

I’m still not sure exactly what I’ll use this blog for and who will read it. I’ll probably talk quite a bit about my feelings and thoughts as we go through our infertility treatments. And I guess I’ll have to decide if I send this out to family or not.